Farokh Engineer, Lycamobile’s Brand Ambassador, recently visited the skills training centre in Chennai where he interacted with staff, alumni and students at work on careers that will lift their families out of poverty.

“I am extremely proud to be associated with a company that is concerned with the wellbeing of the youth from economically disadvantaged backgrounds,” said Farokh Engineer. “The support received at the skills training centre from Lycamobile has enabled youth from the slums in Chennai to gain employable skills for a variety of sectors such as hospitality, automobile and IT services.”

Lycamobile joined hands with The British Asian Trust in 2011 to fund three training centres over three years that will provide livelihoods for 1,500 young people.

“Thanks to this sponsorship provided by Lycamobile and The British Asian Trust, 600 young people in Chennai now have the ability to earn a living that will positively impact their lives and that of their families,” said Farokh Engineer, India’s ace wicketkeeper for nearly 15 years.

“Helping young people escape poverty is the aim,” said Subaskaran Allirajah, Lycamobile’s Chairman. “It’s all about the difference we can make to young people who have no real hope or prospects for the future. We are turning that around and helping them to get on the career ladder,” he said. “It’s a fantastic example of how we are working with The British Asian Trust to reach out to poor, under-educated youth to break the cycle of poverty.

By FATIMA NAJM
Co-Founder of BAT partner Creatives Against Poverty

Photo empowerment is Trust partner Creatives Against Poverty’s (CAP) process of taking pictures that empower the perceived victims of a crisis by turning them into the protagonists in their own stories. It is a way to amplify the voice of near-voiceless. It is a participatory photography project where CAP trains professionals in the human rights industry to consult with the community they are aiming their cameras at.

This workshop is now live with CAP and British Asian Trust mentors supporting DIL participants live with their photography and English writing skills. DIL is a British Asian Trust charity delivery partner.

The ’students’ we are referring to are the frontline officers in a constant struggle against poverty and injustice. They are charged with delivering education and opportunity to 16,000 students by establishing relationships of trust with grassroots communities across some of the most remote regions of Pakistan. They are witness to heinous human rights abuses and they must work with the communities to keep the children on track and in school, supporting them to overcome the trauma of a father killed over a tribal feud, or a sister subject to an honour killing.

They must be ready to do everything from serve as moderators in a jirga or community court of elders, to organising a medical intervention for a particularly sick child, to convincing entire communities that see education as evil that learning will lift them out of poverty.

“Our families are always afraid that educating us means losing us,” said one grade seven student as we turned her classroom into a photo skills workshop. “They think we will become confident and talk back to them, and then we will be bad wives, and no one will want to marry the girls who are educated. But our teachers call meetings and explain that education will just allow us to be better behaved, to be better human beings and yes, even better wives. We can read signs now, in case of emergency we can help.”

These are the stories that Developments in Literacy officers were learning together at the two-day photo-empowerment workshop run by me and my photographer-physicist husband Gustavo Mana in Islamabad.

A caption-writing and news feature style writing workshop complemented the photography workshop and we had an excellent oral session on how to tell a story in one session in the vans on the way to and from the village of Bunni Behk.

Some of the participants had struggled against serious odds to get to the workshop. The field officers from Lower Dir understand the issues of their own extremely conservative community because they are subject to the same traditions and rules when they step out of the house.

“The male members of our family are not pleased that we come to Islamabad, they are worried and are not aware of what happens here, which makes them afraid for us, and also they do not want the community to talk about us as roaming too free.” The three young female officers stood firm in their resolve to join their colleagues in the workshop.

They insisted to their fathers that the photography workshop would help them showcase the way students struggle to study despite their parallel lives where they must engage in backbreaking rural work, and how there is still a lot of work to be done to dispel the forces of ignorance in their area.

The sun stayed with us, dissipating the winter morning mist, helping our participants understand the magical elements that early morning and sunset light add to the process of photography.

The most useful things they learnt according to the students: “That you don’t need a fancy camera, that you can turn off the flash and use natural light if you know some tricks. Also we learnt what facts you need to tell a story with captions and photos in brief.”

What they wished there had been : “Another field trip to practice the practical side of photography further.” What they really enjoyed: “The sharing of stories, learning from each other, the teas and all the laughter when we went wrong/ took silly/awkward photos.”

Meeting vital needs in the areas of mental health, education, and child protection, the Trust’s new partners are reaching out to more than 550,000 disadvantaged people in India and Pakistan.

The Pakistan Mental Health Initiative was launched to introduce community-based care to enable mentally ill people to live and work successfully in their own towns and villages. In partnership with UK-based charity BasicNeeds and Pakistan’s Aman Foundation, the Trust has entered the mental health arena in the country following months of planning and research.

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It was a grey and windy morning as Nafesha, Makda and myself walked through the little paths of Calthorpe Park in London to a meeting room overlooking a football pitch. But the moment we walked in to the graduation ceremony for the young men of Street League it was smiles and sunshine all round! Street League, a Trust charity partner, uses the power of football to get disadvantaged youth into work, education or training.

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This first-ever joint event will showcase the inspiring work of five high-impact charities from The British Asian Trust’s portfolio of delivery partners. The focus will be on helping disadvantaged women, children and young people in India, Pakistan and the UK to overcome poverty.

Five British Asian celebrities from the Trust’s prestigious Ambassador List will present the case for the charities they have chosen to endorse … in six minutes. Celebrity presentations will be followed by an open giving session allowing guests to pledge from as little as £1oo. Previous TFN events have raised as much as £130,000 in one night. The Trust is aiming to raise at least £5,000 per charity.

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HRH The Prince of Wales initiated the Pakistan Recovery Fund to raise investment for development and reconstruction in Pakistan’s worst flood struck areas.  The British Asian Trust is managing the Fund and disbursing grants to effective delivery partners.

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Support from The Tesco Charity Trust, the charitable arm of the UK’s grocery market leader, will transform the lives of young people and their families surviving on as little as £10 a month. The doors to urban job markets will open for 250 disadvantaged youth who will acquire job and life skills leading to employment in information technology, sales, hotel management, office administration and other fields.

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Participating in a Santa race on 3 December in Greenwich, The British Asian Trust ‘team’ walked, ran and jogged to raise awareness and funds for our high-impact education, health and livelihood programmes. There’s still time to sponsor one of our Santas. Contact Sukhi Vig
sukhi@britishasiantrust.org;
020 7024 5646.

Hosting the comeback at West London’s pioneering Notting Hill Arts Club is British Asian Trust Ambassador and BBC Radio 1 DJ Nihal.

Best known for bringing the best of Urban Asian music to the masses, DJ Nihal will be broadcasting his Monday night show live from Bombay Bronx. As an Ambassador for the British Asian Trust, Nihal has dedicated the relaunch of his popular club night to our charity.

The British Asian Trust, a Prince’s Charity founded in 2009, brings lasting change to the lives of poor people in South Asia through access to education, health and livelihoods. So far the Trust has been able to help more than 350,000 people overcome poverty in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the UK.

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The awards, held 23 November in Glasgow, are an evening of celebration to salute the wealth of accomplishments achieved by all those within the room – from the budding entrepreneurs, to the professionals, to the politicians, the academics, and the seasoned business giants.

“We were honoured to be selected as SABA’s charity for 2011,” said Hitan Mehta, Executive Director of The British Asian Trust. “We greatly appreciate the opportunity to gain support for our vital work to help poor people in South Asia overcome poverty through education, livelihoods and health.”